not an arbiter of taste

March 2010

Monday, March 29, 2010

This is a story that began with a meal. The location was the improbable Côte d'Azur, the blue sky coast of Southern France. Think Malibu, only with more money and even thinner, tanner bodies. Needless to say it's not the land of great restaurants, despite the temperate climate, abundant produce - from just over the border in Northern Italy on one side and Provence on the other - not to mention the pristine seafood local fishermen bring in daily from the Mediterranean.

We heard of an ambitious young chef, fresh from the sublime l'Arpège in Paris, who had fallen in love with the region and opened a restaurant, Mirazur, in Menton, the last little town just before the Italian border. When we made our way there, we found a chef whose story was as unlikely as his locale.

Argentinean-born of Italian and Spanish descent, Mauro Colagreco found his love of gastronomy under the talented and lamented Bernard Loiseau, Le Côte d'Or in Saulieu, and perfected his craft under the exigent Alain Passard in Paris. He was awarded his Michelin star the first year Mirazur opened, and when he was named Chef of the Year in the French guide Gault Millau, he became the first non-French chef to have been given the title. To this day he remains the only one.

The first taste of his food, I understood why. Here's a chef who understands and celebrates quality ingredients, not with the indignant refusal to "do much to the food", but with exquisite skills and wild imagination - the Argentinean side of him I'm sure - that both surprise and delight. I still dream of the impossibly sweet red prawn, enrobed by ribbons of fresh young asparagus, borage and wild garlic blossoms and a drizzle of buttery Ligurian olive oil. Biting into it, I realized that one of the asparagus ribbons was sweeter and had a more delicate perfume than the rest. It was in fact a thin, long sliver baby green zucchini, just pretending. That little gesture changed the dynamics of the whole composition, and it'll make you beg for more. Asked where the superlative prawns came from, Mauro told us that he drove to Ventimiglia, a small market town just over the Italian border to his favorite fish monger to get them - Gamberi Rossi as they're called there - a couple times a week. Some of the vegetables came from the budding potager that he just started down the street.

Friday, March 19, 2010

I'm here in Melbourne, enjoying the amazing weather and the fantastic Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. I've been enjoying myself far too much to write a proper post, so you'll have to make do, for now, with the snap shots of people and things I've been enjoying here in Melbourne. More when I get home, promise.

The famous Melbourne Bratwurst sandwich at Queen Victoria Market.

Gippsland blue cheese from Victoria and Pyengana cheddar from Tasmania, at the T'Gallant winery lunch.

A sign at a market stall in Prahran market wishing us a great soirée at the Earthly Abundance dinner.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Just like my friend The Amateur Gourmet Adam, who posted about his recipe-tweaking habit recently, I'm not one to leave a perfect good recipe alone. Even when it comes to something so simple, and so seemingly perfect, I rarely could stop myself from tweaking it a little. At times the results my tinkering are disastrous - Dorie Greenspan's perfectly innocent French Yogurt Cake recipe I played with yesterday was one, but that story's for another time. At other times, however, I ended up with something like this Banana Bread, which I think - rather ungrammatically I might add - is a more perfect version of an already perfect recipe.

I first saw the recipe at Deb's delicious blog Smitten Kitchen. On it she said she got the recipe from our mutual friend Elise at Simply Recipes. Elise, in turn, got it from her friend Heidi's ski friend's mother Mrs. Hockmeyer. The recipe was alarmingly simple. First you mash up your banana, then stir in butter, egg, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Oh, yes, and flour. By hand. No fancy kitchen implements required. That simple.

So I baked one. I liked it, quite a lot. Though there was something that was just not quite there, there. You know what I mean. It was very good, but also very sweet, even after I reduced the sugar amount by 1/4 cup. It was also rather flat and one-note, lacking acidity to support the cloying sweetness. For this I'm not sure if it's the flaw of the recipe or it's the fault of the modern-day bananas engineered to be pretty much all sugar in a tubular form. (You noticed this too, yes, I cannot possibly be the only one.)

Monday, March 01, 2010

Stagiaires are young, often unpaid cooks-in-training. Those working at Mugaritz lost their valuable knives in the devastating fire recently. Replacing their costly tools of the trade will be difficult for these young cooks, yet not having them is not an option. Their plight is surely insignificant in the face of the disasters in Haiti and Chile. But what price a dream?

If you're a frequent visitor to one of the many food forums on the web, you might recognize the name John Sconzo, docsconz as he is known thereabouts. John has set up a fund via the Slow Food chapter in Saratoga to help these young cooks replace their knives. Their goal is to raise $2,500, and they are ever-so-close. So, if you could spare even a few dollars - give up your $4 latte tomorrow morning perhaps - please consider helping these young cooks continue in their pursuits.